Hidden Figures: Why Data Transparency is Essential for Prison Reform

 

A new Guidance Note I’ve written, with Helen Fair, for the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck (ICPR) is encouraging countries around the world to collect and publish more and better data about their prisons and the people locked up in them.  

ICPR’s World Prison Brief has for almost 25 years collated information on prison populations and occupancy rates but many countries don’t themselves routinely make the numbers publicly available.   In the 56 countries of the Commonwealth, only 13 prison services regularly publish figures online although data in many others is sporadically reported in news media or official reports.

Frequently updated statistical information enables authorities and civil society to monitor trends and assess the effectiveness and costs of criminal justice policies. It contributes to public scrutiny of conditions particularly for vulnerable prisoners and informs strategies to address racial disparities and to reform prisons.  Good quality data can also prompt broader questions about the differential use of prisons within and between countries.  Why for example does the percentage of pre-trial detainees vary from 70% in Nigeria’s prisons to 11% in Ghana’s?

Almost all prisons collect administrative data about the people in them for case management purposes, and provided that safeguards are in place, converting this personal data into anonymised aggregated statistics should be relatively straightforward.

Some countries do it very well. India’s National Prisons Information Portal updates the numbers of prisoners in each state every 4 hours. Yet other countries, particularly those with limited resources, struggle to collate information without electronic systems, reliable internet, online platforms for sharing data, or trained staff to operate data systems.

Logistical and practical barriers seem to prevent publication more than a lack of political will. Sometimes the problem is a lack of procedural transparency: for example where prison administrations say that data is available on request, but it is unclear how requests should be made or handled.

The Guidance Note recommends that every country should use an electronic database to produce anonymised statistics, with a reliable methodology for their compilation and arrangements for data governance and protection, developed where possible in cooperation with the national statistics authority.

As for publication, countries are recommended to publish Core Data monthly on a website. This encompasses the number of types of people in prison on any one day, receptions and releases over time, and prison capacity (with details on how this is calculated). The Guidance includes a template for prison systems to use for this purpose.

The Core Data is very much a floor not a ceiling: countries that can should aim to publish more. Some high income countries release additional statistics about incidents in prison, staffing, and costs. Some also release detailed data about the types of offences for which people are held in prison and how long they have been on remand. This can help inform initiatives to ensure that prison is not used unnecessarily and that steps are taken to release people who can be released on bail or have reached the end of their sentence. 

Since accurate statistics are so important to ensure prison is used as a last resort and for the shortest possible time, the Guidance Note suggests that international agencies and donors should consider how best to equip relevant countries with the resources, technology, know-how and training to introduce a suitable data collection system. Better quality prisons data and transparency should also be a priority for consideration at the 15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 2026.

In her recent report on current issues in prison management, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture recommended that prison authorities  report accurately and regularly on detention conditions and overcrowding levels to policy and decision makers and monitoring bodies.  It’s to be hoped that this Guidance Note will prove helpful in enabling them to do so.